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Got gout? Or bursitis? Do your arches ache or your heels hurt? If so, you are among the three out of four Americans who will suffer some kind of foot ailment in their lifetimes. There are at least 300 different types of foot problems. This Special Health Report covers the foot problems that affect most people and helps you prevent and treat them. It also explains how to keep your feet fit and functioning and includes advice for those with special health conditions that affect the feet such as diabetes and arthritis. ... Read more

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Based on the presentations given at the First North American Conference on Elephant Foot Care and Pathology, held in Beaverton, Oregon, March 19-21, 1998. The conclusions and recommendations of the conference are reviewed and supported by a number of additional contributors. Topics covered include routine foot care, foot conditions and treatment, and drug dosages. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

chapter 9 Put Foot in Elephant's :
Surprisingly, chapter 9, fungal foot fetaba is absent from my copy.Also, does not delve enough into corns or "Elephant's circus feet". ... Read more

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The foot often acts as a vital indicator of internal disorders. In addition, its careful examination can point to problems in other parts of the body. This atlas not only diagnoses conditions affecting the foot and lower limb, but also demonstrates approaches for examining the foot that may lead to the diagnosis of systemic disease. Differential diagnosis is included as well as examples for normal variations. The authors offer a collection of foot pictures organized in a variety of ways - by diagnosis, by specific disease-related problems and by normal variations. Troughout, the reader is encouraged to recognize the normal as a basis for understanding the abnormal. ... Read more

Product Description
The book has no illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from the publisher's website (GeneralBooksClub.com). You can also preview excerpts of the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Title: Dress and Care of the Feet: Showing Their Natural Perfect Shape and Construction; Their Present Deformed Condition; and How Flat-Foot, Distorted Toes, and Other Defects Are to Be Prevented or Corrected; Original Publisher: London : William Tegg; Publication date: 1872; Subjects: Foot; Boots; Shoes; Footwear; Art / Fashion; Medical / Anatomy; Medical / Orthopedics; Medical / Podiatry; ... Read more

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This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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This three book set titled: Foot and Ankle Pain, Neck and Arm Pain, Hand Pain and Impairment. Dr. Cailliet's delightful books have been helpful to doctors all over the world, providing commonsense guides for diagnosis and treatment of painful or disabling conditions in various parts of the body. One of the outstanding features of these books is the concise and detailed descriptions of the structure and functional anatomy of each region, with excellent drawings graphically expanding the author's lucid text. These books have been acclaimed by reviewers everywhere. ... Read more

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Chapters: Candidiasis, Onychomycosis, Athlete's Foot, Tinea Capitis, Histoplasmosis, Ringworm, Tinea Versicolor, Eumycetoma, Chromoblastomycosis, Mucormycosis, Sporotrichosis, Zygomycosis, Tinea Corporis, Tinea Cruris, Lobomycosis, Protothecosis, Aspergillosis, Cryptococcosis, Oral Candidiasis, Paracoccidioidomycosis, Angular Cheilitis, Favus, Candidal Vulvovaginitis, Entomophthoramycosis, Rhinosporidiosis, Dermatophytosis, Tinea Incognito, Chronic Mucocutaneous Candidiasis, Tinea Nigra, Pityrosporum Folliculitis, Tinea Barbae, White Piedra, Antibiotic Candidiasis, Tinea Manuum, Tinea Faciei, Black Piedra, Geotrichosis, Primary Pulmonary Coccidioidomycosis, Dermatophytid, Tinea Imbricata, Kerion, Tinea Corporis Gladiatorum, Progressive Disseminated Histoplasmosis, African Histoplasmosis, Erosio Interdigitalis Blastomycetica, Primary Cutaneous Coccidioidomycosis, Disseminated Coccidioidomycosis, Phaeohyphomycosis, Systemic Candidiasis, Congenital Cutaneous Candidiasis, Primary Pulmonary Histoplasmosis, Fungal Folliculitis, Candidal Intertrigo, Hyalohyphomycosis, Granuloma Gluteale Infantum, Primary Cutaneous Histoplasmosis, Fusariosis, Primary Cutaneous Aspergillosis, White Superficial Onychomycosis, Proximal Subungual Onychomycosis, Distal Subungual Onychomycosis, Perianal Candidiasis, Diaper Candidiasis, Candidal Paronychia, Candidal Onychomycosis, Alternariosis, Candidid, Tinea Circinata, Barber's Itch, Perlèche, Valley Fever, Reticuloendotheliosis, Darling's Disease, Cave Disease, Ohio Valley Disease, Coccidioidal Granuloma, Iatrogenic Candidiasis, South American Blastomycosis, Paracoccidioidal Granuloma, Moriform Stomatitis, Chromomycosis, Majocchi Granuloma, Verrucous Dermatitis, Cladosporiosis, Phaeosporotrichosis, Pedroso's Disease, Fonseca's Disease, Desert Rheumatism, San Joaquin Valley Fever, California Disease, Pityriasis Versicolor, Dermatomycosis Furfuracea, Tinea Flava, Tokelau, Tinea Pedis, Rose Gardener's Di...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=2246132 ... Read more

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This digital document is a journal article from Flora, published by Elsevier in . The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Vegetation patterns along environmental gradients in the typical temperate desert from the northern slope of Tianshan Mountains to the southern edge of Dungaree Basin were quantitatively investigated. The results implied that the soil mechanical composition in the study area affects the vegetation distribution remarkably. With concern to the preference to fine grain, the order is Tamarix ramosissima community>Reaumuria soongorica community>Haloxylon ammodendron community. An opposite order exists for the preference to coarse grain. R. soongorica community has higher resistance to saline soil than H. ammodendron community, and occurs in habitats of higher salinity. T. ramosissima community does not show an obvious preference to salinity or water table depth, but a quite remarkable preference to a high soil moisture content. ... Read more

Product Description
"In China, a woman is nothing."

Thus begins the saga of a woman born at the turn of the century to a well-to-do, highly respected Chinese family, a woman who continually defied the expectations of her family and the traditions of her culture. Growing up in the perilous years between the fall of the last emperor and the Communist Revolution, Chang Yu-i's life is marked by a series of rebellions: her refusal as a child to let her mother bind her feet, her scandalous divorce, and her rise to Vice President of China's first women's bank in her later years.

In the alternating voices of two generations, this dual memoir brings together a deeply textured portrait of a woman's life in China with the very American story of Yu-i's brilliant and assimilated grandniece, struggling with her own search for identity and belonging. Written in pitch-perfect prose and alive with detail, Bound Feet and Western Dress is the story of independent women struggling to emerge from centuries of customs and duty.Amazon.com Review
When Chang Yu-I was three her mother tried to bind her feet. But thechild's cries so tormented her brother that he convinced their mother tostop. This break with convention foreshadowed the extraordinary life Yu-i wasto lead. After following her husband, poet Hsu Chi-Mo, a noted philanderer,to Oxford, she made history by becoming the first Chinese woman to have awestern-style divorce at age 22. Determined to make her own way, she moved toAmerica and served in a series of prestigious positions, including presidentof a bank. Written by Yu-i's great niece, Pang-Mei Natasha Chang, BoundFeet and Western Dress chronicles the life of this exceptional woman. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (34)

Excellent look into a different time & culture
This book was wonderful read.It truly provides you a look into a different time and place.If you are a westerner that thinks foot binding was evil and kept women captive & subserviant that this book will be an inspirational look into the true power of women and all that we can accomplish with focus, dedication and hard work, regardless of your heritage, or birth rite.

Bound Feet&Western Dress: A Memoir
This book was so interesting, I think I read it in less than two days. It shows the changes Asian women went through as history marched on. I had no other way of knowing any of this information, and it's so different from my own culture.

Complex, interesting true story, full of information about Chinese culture and mores
I found this book to be a compelling read. It does reveal, while the author is relating the life of her great aunt from China, a lot of interesting information related to the customs, traditions and mores of the old Chinese culture in the early twentieth century. Hergreat aunt was the first in old china to get divorced from her husband, after being abandoned by him .She was young, poorly educated, with two children, one of whom tragically died shortly after her divorce. She morphs from a poorly educated, dependent woman into a self-reliant,educated, successful woman, who eventually becomes a VP of the Shanghi Woman's Savings Bank and helps ensure it's survival, while Japan was invading Shanghi. Luckily, she leaves Shanghi a day before the Japanese takeover and moves to Hong Kong. Eventually, she remarries in 1952 and then, after her secondhusband dies in 1972, she emigrates to the USA. When her great niece finds her name in books while she is studying Far East Culture while studying atHarvard University, she is amazed to find her great aunt's name listed and then decides to interview her, and thus the idea of the book emerges and is completed over many years. A truely unusual and compelling book to read for anyone interested in the Chinese culture, people and history. Quite a different read, inspiring and moving in many ways.

An Intriguing Read
In the late 1990s, the Chinese-American Pang-Mei Natasha Chang wrote her first book entitled "Bound Feet and Western Dress," which accounts the life story of the author's great aunt, Chang Yu-i. The author was the first generation of the Chang family to be born in the United States. She wrote the book about her own search of Chinese identity in the American world and the tale of her great aunt's hard and interesting life.

The book is broken into fifteen chapters, which describe the early life of Yu-i, the history of the Chang family, the life of the author herself, the lifestyle of women in China, the marriage and the divorce of Yu-i and Hsu Chih-mo, and the last years of Yu-i's life.

One can understand the influence of modernity on the Chinese society and the Chinese women as one look at the author's great aunt as a traditional girl and her strength as a woman, why Chih-mo marry her, and the significance of their divorce in this book. "Bound Feet and Western Dress" is intriguing work and an enjoyable read.

Top-Hats, Half-Moons, and the Painful Glint of Changes
Change can be a frightening affair, and looking back at change can be something that seems almost alien when beheld in the light of certain convictions. That seems to encapsulate the whole of the experience that Chang Yu-I talks about as she tries to explain something of who she is to her granddaughter, Pang-Mei, and it is one of the things that seemed to haunt me as a reader as I listened to Yu-I's tale. The chapters switch from Yu-I to Pang-Mei to give you and idea of how things have changed and to try to identify one person with the other, and I have to say that I found myself glued to the pages and not able to stop reading this book. At first I simply thought it was a story about a granddaughter wanting to explore her grandmother's life because she was the first person to have a Western-style divorce in China, and maybe that was her reason beginning the book. Still, the book goes well beyond that and touches on the dynamics of change and strength and how strong a person can be even when they think they are at their weakest.

Honestly, I thought I could vicariously feel my heart cracking under the weight of some of Yu-I's confessions, amazed by some of the things she was able to tell her granddaughter.

One of the best things about this tale is the detail that Yu-I goes into about China, and about the way things were seen in the past versus the way things became seen as war loomed on the horizon. Yu-I gives a great amount of detail about what it was like to be a child in a country like China, and she vividly recollects what its like to have one's feet bound and the reasons why this practice took place. All that breaking and rebreaking, the tying of the big toe over and over again; when I read this I cringed because it seemed so debilitating just to have a crescent-shape added to the foot. Furthering this are pictures in the book, showing what the feet actually look like when this happens - you can see the shriveled remains of feet that look almost mummified, and you can tell some of the extremes that went into making a foot look like that. Yu-I talks about the pain that's she, herself, experienced because of this practice, too; she tells her granddaughter about being three and having her mother try to bind her feet, and then talks about the torment of those moments and how it was her brother that made her stop this because he couldn't deal with her suffering. Yu-I goes on to tell of the pain that this caused her, too, with her always feeling as if she were ugly because she had "big feet" and "big feet" made a person almost untouchable when it comes to marriage. Still, she does marry the poet Hsu Chi-Mo and, for a time, she thinks this is perfect and learns the rites of being a wife. She cares for the mother-in-law, she takes care of the husband's family; basically she becomes a slave and thinks that this dedication is seem by her husband as love. It is only when she moves to a foreign country with her husband that she finds out what he is like and how she is alone, and when she understands that she is utterly abandoned she explains how it feels to want to die.

There are other painful things in the book, too, things I can't disclose without messing up part of the tale, but I can say that when she is in Germany and loses something more dear to her than anything that this was devastating to read, making the book almost too heavy to pick up because its honesty was like a barb in the soul. I appreciated that, to be honest, and can say that I have read a lot of pieces of literature but that I have rarely encountered a person like Yu-I that both loves the world she lives in, understands the things that she has experienced, and even knows what forgiveness is like.
While this normally would not be something I would recommend, it has my highest recommendation and the most humble form of respect I can give, thinking it an enduring read that really has something to say.
I cannot give the book or the voice behind it enough praise. ... Read more

Product Description
Over the centuries and throughout the world, women have struggled for equality and basic rights. Their challenge in the Middle East has been intensified by the rise of a political Islam that too often condemns women’s empowerment as Western cultural imperialism or, worse, anti-Islamic. In Paradise Beneath Her Feet, Isobel Coleman shows how Muslim women and men are fighting back with progressive interpretations of Islam to support women’s rights in a growing movement of Islamic feminism.

In this timely book, Coleman journeys through the strategic crescent of the greater Middle East—Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan—to reveal how activists are working within the tenets of Islam to create economic, political, and educational opportunities for women. Coleman argues that these efforts are critical to bridging the conflict between those championing reform and those seeking to oppress women in the name of religious tradition. Success will bring greater stability and prosperity to the Middle East and stands to transform the region.
   
Coleman highlights a number of Muslim men and women who are among the most influential Islamic feminist thinkers, and brilliantly illuminates the on-the-ground experiences of women who are driving change: Sakena Yacoobi, an Afghan educator, runs more than forty women’s centers across Afghanistan, providing hundreds of thousands of women with literacy and health classes and teaching them about their rights within Islam. Madawi al-Hassoon, a successful businesswoman, is challenging conservative conventions to break new ground for Saudi professional women. Salama al-Khafaji, a devout dentist-turned-politician, relies on moderate interpretations of Islam to promote opportunities for women in Iraq’s religiously charged environment. These quiet revolutionaries are using Islamic feminism to change the terms of religious debate, to fight for women’s rights within Islam instead of against it.

There is no mistaking that women and women’s issues are very much on the front lines of a war that is taking place between advocates of innovation, tolerance, and plurality and those who use violence to reject modernity in Muslim communities around the world. Ultimately,  Paradise Beneath Her Feet offers a message of hope: Change is happening—and more often than not, it is being led by women. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Paradise Beneath Her Feet
Read this book!

Isobel Coleman has written a concise and inspiring account of how individual women are changing the attitudes in the Middle East.Through the use of traditional religious texts, in this case the Holy Qur'an, women are successfully challenging how they are being treated and winning concessions from the male hierarchy.Ms. Coleman has a real gift for presenting these women as vibrant, intelligent individuals.Her ability to mix anecdote with hard fact makes this book a real joy to read.As one who has recently completed studies on a Master's Degree in international diplomacy, I have had to wade through many dry tomes.Paradise Beneath Her Feet does not fall into that category.It is that rare and happy mix of informative and entertaining.It also goes a long way towards dispelling the misconceptions that surround Islam and the Holy Qur'an.Paradise Beneath Her Feet should be required reading for anyone interested in human rights, religion, or international relations.

Nearly perfect
A truly remarkable book. Well-researched and insightful. Would be perfect if it included some analysis of the foundations of the "traditional" and "conservative" patriarchical beliefs that remain so prevalent in the Middle East. Surely these beliefs are based in something more than male desires to deny women their rights. A brief exposition on the anthropological foundations for these "traditions" would provide additional context.

I bought this book for my college age daughter, and I finished it before she did. An important book, in my opinion.

Impressive research and presentation
Isobel Coleman is senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (an independent, non-partisan organization not affiliated with the U.S. Govt.). This book is the result of nearly a decade of travel, study, interviews, and writing about women in the Middle East.

Paradise Beneath Her Feet is an overview of both the history and current state of affairs with regard to women's rights in the Middle East. Each chapter is devoted to one of the major Middle Eastern nations. Issues are complex and progress is slow, but courageous and persistent women in these countries are speaking out for fair treatment and equal rights. They arm themselves with verses from the Quran which call for justice and nonviolence toward women.
The key challenge lies in disentangling cultural traditions from the actual tenets of Islam. Many of the restrictions placed on women in the name of Islam come from primitive beliefs not supported by the Quran. As these women study the Quran on their own, they are able to show that many Muslim family laws are not defensible using holy scripture.

Islamic Feminisim in the Greater Middle East
Well-researched, well-written, and incredibly informative book by Coleman on Islamic feminism in the greater Middle East. Definitely something to add to your repertoire ME knowledge because it hasn't been written about enough and yet, Islamic feminism seems to be making significant headway into improving and advocating for women's rights and thus, human rights in the Middle East.

Islamic feminism sounds like a paradox, but its success stems from the crucial basics of cultural relativism and participation necessary for good international development.

A must read!

AMAZING
this book was not at all what i thought it would be, it has made me look at the world in a different light and i feel so much more informed about the issues we face as a collective peoples.
Keep up the GOOD WORK!!! ... Read more

Product Description

This is the epic story of how African-Americans, in the six decades following slavery, transformed themselves into a political people--an embryonic black nation. As Steven Hahn demonstrates, rural African-Americans were central political actors in the great events of disunion, emancipation, and nation-building. At the same time, Hahn asks us to think in more expansive ways about the nature and boundaries of politics and political practice.

Emphasizing the importance of kinship, labor, and networks of communication, A Nation under Our Feet explores the political relations and sensibilities that developed under slavery and shows how they set the stage for grassroots mobilization. Hahn introduces us to local leaders, and shows how political communities were built, defended, and rebuilt. He also identifies the quest for self-governance as an essential goal of black politics across the rural South, from contests for local power during Reconstruction, to emigrationism, biracial electoral alliances, social separatism, and, eventually, migration.

Hahn suggests that Garveyism and other popular forms of black nationalism absorbed and elaborated these earlier struggles, thus linking the first generation of migrants to the urban North with those who remained in the South. He offers a new framework--looking out from slavery--to understand twentieth-century forms of black political consciousness as well as emerging battles for civil rights. It is a powerful story, told here for the first time, and one that presents both an inspiring and a troubling perspective on American democracy.

Customer Reviews (4)

African American Consciousness, Perception, and Awareness
Much more focused and more detailed than Eric Foner's Forever Free, Han's A Nation under Our Feet is a large and complex story about how African Americans, in the 60 years after slavery - during the era of reconstruction - metamorphosed into a dynamic political people - the seeds of a transnational black nation (Hahn, A Nation under Our Feet 465-478). Hahn provides a new perspective with which to look at contemporary African American consciousness, perception, and awareness as well as emerging struggles for civil rights (Hahn, A Nation under Our Feet 472-473).

Hahn shows us how the rural southern African Americans became the locus of politics during the Civil War, emancipation, and reconstruction (Hahn, A Nation under Our Feet 62-115, and 206-215). Hahn's intervention therefore is to (re)examine the nature and contours of American politics and political practice (Hahn, A Nation under Our Feet 469-472). Highlighting the importance of solidarity, work, and complexes of communiqué, A Nation under Our Feet looks at the political connection and framework that evolved out of slavery and shows how newly liberated African Americans set the foundation for working class mobilization (Hahn, A Nation under Our Feet 128-141). Hahn takes us to the local levels, using his deep research he shows us how networks were established, secured, and reconstructed (Hahn, A Nation under Our Feet 232). Hahn moreover also articulates the African American search for true self-governance as an important objective of African American politics. Starting with the rural South, to local power struggles, to emigrationism, and finally migration (Hahn, A Nation under Our Feet 317-329, 341-345, and 360-363). Hahn suggests that Garveyism and alternative grassroots modalities of Black Nationalism took in and took from these earlier modalities of resistance, thus connecting the first cohort of migrants to the urban North with those who stayed in the rural South.

Engaging history of black politics before and after the Civil War
I suspect that Steven Hahn's "A Nation Under Our Feet" (ANOUF) was originally and primarily intended for a collegiate-level academic audience, perhaps in a history course studying slavery in the United States and its aftermath.However, it almost certainly received a much wider than intended audience when it won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in History.Indeed, that is the reason I read the book, as I try to read the Pulitzer Prize winning history book every year, to expand upon the very minimal grounding in history that one receives in today's U.S. educational system.So, the "non history major" perspective is the one from which I am reviewing this book.

Although ANOUF is pretty dense and does resemble a typical academic tome, with long paragraphs and voluminous footnotes, the compelling subject matter and Steven Hahn's prose elevate it far above the typical sleep-inducing history book that only finds a home on dusty college library shelves.I can surmise several reasons why the Pulitzer panel chose to honor it:the importance of the subject matter (black politics from before emancipation to the great migration north); the painstaking research that Hahn put into the project (by reading this book, you get the condensed wisdom from what appears to be hundreds of other books and documents that Hahn studied); and the quality of Hahn's writing, which manages to present detailed descriptions of events in a fairly engaging manner.It's not the page turner that "The DaVinci Code" is, but the subject matter is far more important.

ANOUF aims to describe how blacks in the South, especially the rural South, practiced politics both during and after slavery.During slavery, of course, they had no legal representation in the formal political system, but Hahn shows how they used various informal means to disseminate information, form community views, and then attempt to change what they could.The most fascinating part of the book, I feel, is the account of politics during and after the Civil War, including Reconstruction and the backlash of Redemption.The Civil War was a far more complex event than the popular four word summary of "Lincoln freed the slaves", and the many parties involved had different views of what the war meant, what they were fighting for, and what it meant when the war was over.To a large extent, when the formal war ended, the fighting continued in other ways, and eventually the Southern whites were able to re-exert their influence.The portrait the book paints of the Democratic Party and its close alliance to the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacist paramilitary organizations is brutal, and one that would shock many modern-day Democrats who don't know the history of their party.But that's just a minor point - this book is far deeper and more nuanced than modern-day party-line politics.In fact, it does an admirable job of showing the true roots of politics, and all the different ways that black people worked together to make their views heard, through a wide variety of means.

If you are interested in learning a lot more than what you are taught in U.S. public schools about slavery; if you want to gain a greater understanding of the background behind contemporary race politics in the U.S.; if you are a Civil War buff; or if you just appreciate a good history book, then I can definitely recommend "A Nation Under Our Feet".

How Southern Blacks Empowered Themselves
Steven Hahn's history "A Nation Under Our Feet" (2004) tells an inspiring and broad story: how rural Southern African Americans took steps towards political empowerment as a group beginning with the period of slavery and continuing through the Great Migration to the Northern states beginning early in the Twentieth Century.Hahn is a Professor of American History at the University of Pennsylvania, and his book received, and justly so, the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize and the Merle Curti Prize in Social History.

The purpose of Professor Hahn's study is to show how African Americans from their earliest days in the South attempted to organize to take control of their own destiny.The book challenges the view of many historians that African American political activism was predominantly only a reaction to white oppression and to the unwillingness of Southern whites to have African Americans assume a full role in political life.

Professor Hahn's book is arranged chronologically in three broad Parts.Part I covers African American political activity during the pre-Civil War and Civil War period.He describes how blacks, even in the condition of slavery, used their position to wrestconcessions from the slaveholders, including the right tofarm their own plots, to make limited sales of produce, and to visit neighboring plantations.He describes the growth of an informational network during these years, an early commitment to education to literacy, and the beginnings of a political organization.These early efforts intensified during the Civil War with the advance of Union Armies in the South, the defection of many slaves, and the service of Southern African Americans in the Union Army.

The second part of the book covers the complexities of the Reconstruction period from the close of the War through about 1877.This is the heart of Hahn's account, and it has been influenced heavily by Eric Foner, W.E.B. DuBois, and John Hope Franklin.Professor Hahn shows the strong efforts of many African Americans throughout the South to take control of their destinies and to make active and responsible contributions to the body politic.During this period, African Americans had many leaders who had been slaves or free blacks prior to the War and who had acquired literacy and political ability.They achieved a degree of success for a time in different parts of the South but their efforts were doomed by Southern Paramilitary movements, such as the Ku Klux Klan, and by the unwillingness of the United
States government to stand wholeheatedly behind black civil rights.Professor Hahn tells a chilling story of murder and political intimidation which, as did the efforts of the black leadership, had its roots in the years before the Civil War.

Part three of the book covers the years following the end of Reconstruction, a period which sometimes is greatly oversimplified.Even with the end of Reconstruction, African Americans made efforts to empower themselves by forging alliances with white groups.During the first decade or so following Reconstruction, Southern whites were sufficiently divided among themselves to allow African Americans a degree of political leverage and power.Also during these years, there was an active black emigrationist movement which encouraged blacks to move to Liberia or to a location outside the South -- such as Kansas.And this movement had some limited success in forcing concessions from economic powers in the South.Again, the political structure African Americans created during this time survived the Jim Crow era in the South and contributed directly to the Great Migration to the North of the twentieth Century and, ultimately to the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-twentieth century.Professor Hahn has interesting and largely sympathetic things to say about Marcus Garvey and his movement in the 1920s for the repartriation of American blacks to Liberia.

This study is dense, highly detailed, and thoroughly documented.Professor Hahn displays a wealth of learning in the primary literature and in secondary studies.The footnote documentaion is extensive.This book is probably not suitable for the reader coming to this subject matter for the first time.The book makes for heavy reading and it presupposes some basic knowledge in the reader about slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the many post-reconstruction movements in Southern politics in the different Southern states.It seems to me as well that the book owes a considerable debt to C Vann Woodward's study, now over 50 years old, "The Origins of the New South 1877 -- 1913" which covers some of the same material on African American political activism.Professor Hahn has written an outstanding work of American History, African American History, and Southern History. This book will be invaluable to serious students of our Nation's history.

Robin Friedman

A historical work of major importance
Every now and then one reads that political history has fallen on hard times.And there is some truth to this.Much political history seems awash in a sea of detail, accounts of endless intrigues and bureaucratic machinations whose overall significance is unclear, while regression coefficients run amuck. Surely, a reader may be tempted to think, Michael Holt's 1296 page history of the Whig Party tell us more than anyone would possibly want to know about the subject.Steven Hahn's new book is very different.Twenty years ago he published "Roots of Southern Populism," a brilliant monograph on postbellum white Southern farmers.Now after two decades this new book fully confirms the promise of his first book.It helps, of course, that Hahn cares about his subject and makes sure that we care as well.Hahn tells the story of black Southern politics from the last decade of slavery to the civil war through Reconstruction.Then he goes on about the next two decades before disfranchisement when African-Americans sought to maintain their positions with alliances with the Virginia Readjusters in the 1880s and the Populists in the 1890s.

But surely we already know the basic contours of the story.Do we really need to be told that African-Americans were not just passive subjects but actively sought their own political ends?But Hahn provides much more than this.For a start he provides a much larger definition of politics than other writers might.He looks at the kinship networks, the importance of church and school, the significance of labor, and the value of community.Notwithstanding the wide unity of African-Americans he takes special care to discuss differences over region, strategy and especially class.He notes the rise of more successful blacks, those who benefited from military service, literacy, earlier freedom and access to land.He starts off by discussing slavery and he gives an excellent discussion of the system of petty production which allowed slaves limited access to markets and money.We then read up to date accounts ofslave families and slave religion as well as a pioneering discussion of the networks of information that slaves had. The next chapter deals with the now familiar tale of how hundreds of thousands of slaves fled plantations, 150,000 joined the union army to defeat the Confederacy, while many of the rest engaged in "sulkiness, demoralization, insolence and outright insubordination."There is then a chapter based on much original and new material about the wave of rumours that ran through the south in the fall of 1865 that much Southern land would be divided up and given to the freedpeople.We learn about the freedmen conventions that made noticeable efforts to attract the rural black majority, as well as the routes and circuits of rumours.

The next three chapters deal with Reconstruction.Hahn points out the scope of political mobilization and the rise of Black militias.He points out the tremendous feat of registering a largely illiterate population once they achieved the vote, a feat rarely matched in American history. He discusses the difficulties of interracial cooperation in the Union League and how officials had to yield to popular wishes and sensibilities.We are reminded of the scope of black office-holding, and especially of the importance of holding local posts during Reconstruction.Not simply governors, senators or state legislators, but also sheriffs, magistrates, registrars and tax collectors, were vital to hold.We are also reminded how unprecedented it was for such a deprived class to achieve such power after emancipation.We are reminded of the constant pressures of vigilantism and economic pressure directed against African-Americans and we also learn about the use of intimidation to counter this.Associational life boomed with black burial clubs, saving banks, firefighting clubs and mutual aid societies being formed.We learn of more subtle checks on democracy, such as the widespread use of bonds.A lowly court clerk might have to post $3,000, while a sheriff might have to post as much as $90,000.Naturally this only encouraged people to place their dependence on the wealthy who stood as surety for them.And of course we learn about the Ku Klux Klan, and how they especially targeted schools for their murder and assassination raids.

Part three looks at the "Redemption period."On the one hand blacks were still able to make alliances with Readjusters and Populists.But the intense hostility whites had to voting for black officials or living in communities run by black officials undermined every alliance.Hahn points out that this hostility was not simply racism; there were intense ideological prejudices within American ideology that looked down at any underclass, there were few areas such as churches and school where poor blacks and whites could meet, and kinship ties and economic dependence blunted class differences with the Democratic ruling class.But this hostility existed nevertheless and it was not overcome.Hahn also discusses such movements as Exodusters to Kansas and colonization of Liberia.Although they attracted only 25,000 or so in the late 1870s, they had a larger constituency of people who would have liked to move but lacked either the money to do so or were cowed by white opposition.Hahn points out that emigration was particularly weak in those areas of South Carolina and Louisiana had blunted the worst of redemption, and he also notes that the threat of emigration helped blunt the first round of anti-black Redemption measures in the 1870s.Hahn also points out these nationalist tendencies lasted well into the twenties, where most of Marcus Garvey's supporters were in the countryside.Especially noteworthy is Hahn's interest in gender and the importance of women as mothers, political advocates, community organizersand anti-lynching advocates.With 101 pages of notes, papers from at least fifteen different archives and a thorough grasp of the secondary literature, "A Nation Under Our Feet," confirms Hahn's status as one of the leading American historians. ... Read more

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Good Background -
In 1820, India and China contributed nearly half of the world's income; in 1950, it was down to one-tenth, has now risen back to one-fifth, and is projected to reach one-third by 2025. Author Bardhan compares China and India across a number of dimensions. No disrespect intended, but I'm primarily interested in China, due to its fantastic economic rise since 1979.

China's average output grew an average 7.1%/year from 1979 to 1984, vs. 2.7% from 1970-1978. TVEs were the most dynamic part of China's economy in the first two decades of its reform. They went from less than 6% GDP in 1978 to 26% in 1996. In the 1980s, regional and local governments had SOE managers sign performance responsibility contracts in return for greater freedom; the government also subsidized workers buying their formerly SOE-supplied apartments, while relieving the SOEs of that responsibility. Some SOE managers were selected by auctioning commitments to profit delivery. By 2005, two-thirds of regional SOEs were privatized - the top managers of three-quarters of them were the new owners. Until the late 1990s, dismissal of Chinese workers was limited to 1% of staff/year, and they had to be found new employment. Large-scale SOEe layoffs then came, cushioned by a safety net. Of the total government spending in China, over half is made at sub-provincial levels. China's manufacturers used to have excessive inventories, typical of state-enterprises, no more.

Reliance on reservoir storage of water in China is almost 5X the amount in India. China's rice yield/hectare is 2X that of India's, and 1.5X in wheat - this has continued for centuries.

At the beginning of the 1990s, India's highway and rail infrastructure was greater than China's in terms of miles. Chinese powercompanies ROE approximates 12% - enough incentive for investment and repairs. Industry uses about 75% of the power, agriculture and residential users consumer about 14%, and transmission losses are about 7%. Non-payment and theft are not problems. The cost of power in India is about 35% higher, and industrial users experience 17 significant shutdowns/month, vs. only 5 in China. Theft and non-billing losses approximate 37% in India; not surprisingly, the system runs at a loss. China had 100 km. of expressways in 1988, 60,000 by 2009. India has about 8,000. China finances roads more through tolls than fuel taxes; private finance only accounts for less than 10%. Staff costs are about 25% of China's railways, 50% in India - again, not suprisingly, India's railways are poorly utilized and repaired. China took less than two years to acquire land and relocate people in Shanghai, vs. Mumbai taking 13 years and still not finished. Beijing has 24-hour water service, while Mumbai/Delhi has 4-5 hours/day. Ship turnaround in Shanghai is much faster than Mumbai (3.6 days); Hong Kong is the fastest - down to hours, in some cases.

Domestic gross savings in China was 54% of GDP in 2008 - 6% from government, retained earnings (low dividends, capital investment/replenishment -->20%), and personal savings the remainder. India's gross savings average 38%.

A state study found that 2,932 of the 3,320 Chinese citizens with at least 100 million RMB were children of high-ranking Party officials. Most corruption occurs through land transfers - by 2006, 60 million Chinese farmers lost their land without adequate compensation - the money goes to kickbacks and extra government revenues.

China's role in industrial support includes bargaining the terms of FDI, negotiating prices of imported materials, channelling investment to favored sectors, directing M&A, promoting capabilities, and appointing managers.

A few good ideas
This short book has a few interesting ideas.

The most surprising ones involve favorable claims about China's collectivist period (but without any claim that that period was better overall).

China under Mao apparently had a fairly decentralized economic system, with reasonable performance-based incentives for local officials, which meant that switching to functioning capitalism required less change than in Russia.

Chinese health apparently improved under Mao (in spite of famine), possibly more than it has since, at least by important measures such as life expectancy. This is reportedly due to more organized and widespread measures against ordinary communicable diseases under collectivism. ... Read more